Cornell University Library 
 LC 1003.F37 
 
 On some defects in public school educati 
 
 3 1924 013 105 303 
 
ON SOME DEFECTS IN PUBLIC SCHOOL' 
 EDUCATIOW^'. 
 
 A LECTURE 
 
 delivered" AT THE ROYAL INSTITUTION, 
 On Friday, February 8th, 1^67. 
 
 WITH NOTES AND APPENDliCES. 
 
 REV. F. W. FARRAR, M.A. F.R.S. 
 
 LATE FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE; 
 HON. FELLOW OF KING'S COLLEGE, LONDON ; '' 
 . ' ONE OF THE MASTERS AT HARROW SCHOOL ; 
 M THOKfOFf' THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE," *' CHAPTERS ON LANGl'.\GE,"' K'l 
 
 PUBLISHED BY REQUEST. 
 
 ^oniron : 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 1S67. 
 
 PRICE ONE SHILLING. 
 
The original of tliis bool< is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013105303 
 
ON SOME DEFECTS IN PUBLIC 
 SCHOOL EDUCATION, 
 
 " L' etude de l'antiquit6 resta done, et avec raison, dans I'enseigneraent classique ; 
 inais les meilleurs esprits, les defenseurs les plus edalres de cet enseignement, recon- 
 naissaient d6jA, k I'^poqiie oil ces questions s'agitaient, qu'une amelioration etait 
 necessaire et iirgente." 
 
 M. Vincent Duruv, l^Iinistre de rinstriiction Publique, 1866, 
 
ON SOME DEFECTS TN PUBLIC SCHOOL 
 EDUCATION. 
 
 A LECTURE 
 
 DELIVERED AT THE ROYAL INSTITUTION, 
 On Friday, February 8th, 1867. 
 
 WITH NOTES AND APPENDICES. 
 
 REV. F.' W.'FARRAR, M.A. F.R.S. 
 
 LATE FELLOW OF' TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE; 
 
 HON. FELLOW OF KINg'S COLLEGE, LONDON : 
 
 ONE OF THE MASTERS AT HARROW SCHOOL ; 
 
 ALITHOR OF "THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE," *' CHAPTERS ON LANGUAGE," ETC. 
 
 PUBLISHED BY REQUEST. 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 1867. 
 
 [ The Right of Translation and Reproduction is n-senied.] 
 
LONDON : 
 CLAY, SON, AND TAYLOK, TKINTERS, 
 BREAD STREET HILL. 
 
TO 
 
 PROFESSOR TYNDALL, F.R.S. LL.D. 
 
 WHOSE WRITINGS AND RESEARCHES 
 
 HAVE GIVEN SO POWERFUL A STIMULUS TO 
 
 RATIONAL EDUCATION 
 
 I kMatf 
 
 THE FOLLOWING PAGES. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 This Lecture is published by the request of a large 
 number of those who heard it delivered. It is 
 not impossible that I may at some future period 
 treat the subjects, at which I have here glanced, 
 in a much fuller manner, and adduce in their 
 support a far more powerful and extensive array 
 of arguments than in so short a space it was 
 possible to do. At present I have contented 
 myself with adding four Appendices, to show how 
 many scholars and eminent men share in the 
 views which I have here expressed. These ap- 
 pendices are — on the ignorance which is so often 
 the sole result of an exclusively classical education ; 
 on the general uselessness of the many hours spent 
 over Latin and Greek verses; on the irrational 
 
viii PREFACE. 
 
 way in which we have taught grammar ; and on 
 that strange and disastrous neglect of science 
 which has hitherto been the worst blot on our 
 Public School curriculum. Such testimonies might, 
 without the slightest effort, be quadrupled in 
 number. It will not be possible much longer for 
 any one to ignore them. 
 
 F. W. F. 
 
A LECTURE. 
 
 When I had the honour of being invited to deliver 
 a Lecture before the Royal Institution, my subject 
 was at the same time assigned to me. Yet, even 
 if this had not been the case, it would perhaps 
 have been unnecessary to apologise for speaking to 
 you on a topic of great importance, of which I 
 know so much from personal experience. Although, 
 therefore, my Lecture must be of an interest im- 
 measurably inferior to those fairy tales of science, 
 illustrated by delicate and wonderful experiments, 
 to which you are accustomed in this place ; it will, 
 at least, be so far scientific in its spirit, that it will 
 deal with no facts which have not been derived 
 from first-hand observation. 
 
 Thirteen full years of labour spent in the heart 
 of Public Schools, and devoted, to the utmost 
 of my poor ability, to their service, are the ere- 
 
10 ON SOME DEFECTS IN 
 
 dentials which I offer to save me from the charge 
 of presumption if I deal with their shortcomings. 
 My position differs widely — nay, absolutely — from 
 that of a rude, uncompromising, and unsympathetic 
 assailant. The fact that I have myself toiled for 
 years at a task which, in many instances, has filled 
 me with the misgiving that it would be as barren 
 of all obvious results as if I had ploughed the sand 
 of the sea-shore and sown salt in its furrows, will 
 show, I trust, that I am no arrogant critic with an 
 eye blind to every merit, but keen as that of an 
 eagle to every fault. Honouring the body of public 
 schoolmasters with a sincere honour, — believing 
 that, though their usefulness is often impaired by 
 the trammels of an unprofitable routine, there may 
 be found among them men of conscience the most 
 enlightened, of intellect at once solid and brilliant, 
 of indomitable energy and noble purpose, — I can 
 hardly be suspected of desiring to cast a slur on a 
 profession, to which, however lightly it may be 
 estimated by the outer world, it is my pride and 
 pleasure to belong. If, then, a hand so feeble as 
 mine can inflict the slightest wound on our present 
 system, I ask to be believed when I say that it is 
 the faithful wound of a friend, and that my spear, 
 like the spear of Achilles, is meant to heal as well 
 as smite. If I criticize Public Schools fearlessly, it 
 
P UBLIC SCHOOL ED UCA TION. \ \ 
 
 is because I love them deeply, and because I would 
 not willingly see them fall into that gradual neglect 
 and disesteem, which must be the consequence of a 
 refusal on their part to progress with a progressive 
 age, and to widen the narrow horizon of their 
 studies with the widening of an epoch, whose re- 
 searches have thrown light on every region of 
 nature, from its minutest organism to its most 
 distant nebulae and stars. 
 
 Not, then, from any wish to conciliate favour for 
 my future remarks, still less because I shrink from 
 the full brunt of any anger they may bring upon 
 me, let me say as the hearty tribute of my genuine 
 admiration, that judged by the nobility and service- 
 ableness of the manhood they have trained, the 
 Public Schools have no cause to blush; and that 
 though they may have fallen far short of that 
 splendid ideal which is entertained for them in the 
 aspirations of those who love them best, they may 
 yet put forth an irrefragable claim to the respect 
 and honour of their bitterest enemies : — 
 
 " Great men have been among them, — hands that penned, 
 And tongues that uttered wisdom." 
 
 And although they have no right to claim the 
 entire credit of such names, because the greatest 
 men are often the accidents rather than the results 
 of a system, and they have often been great in spite 
 
12 ON SOME DEFECTS IN 
 
 of it ratlier than because oi it, yet, when a school (like; 
 that which I have at this moment the honour to 
 serve) may boast to have produced in one half- 
 cehtury among its five Prime Ministers, a Palmer- 
 ston, a Peel, a Spencer Percival, and an Aberdeen ; 
 and among its statesmen a Dalhousie and a Sydney 
 Herbert; and among its soldiers and sailors a 
 Rodney and a Codrington ; and among its poets a 
 Byron and a Proctor; and among its scholars a 
 Parr and a Sir WilHam Jones; and among its 
 divines, a Trench and a Manning ; and among its 
 common crowd of unknown alumni, so vast a multi- 
 tude of honourable and useful men ; — such a school 
 (and it is but an illustrious type of many more) 
 has no cause to fear that a system which, in other 
 days has borne " such fruit in all its branches," will 
 be hastily or indiscriminately condemned. 
 
 I. To proceed, then, to my review of our present 
 system in its workings and results, I would state 
 my belief that the social education offered by our 
 schools is one of immense value. I am not now 
 alluding to the despicable advantage of making 
 fashionable acquaintances, but to something much 
 deeper and more indisputable. It is, I think, a 
 distinct benefit to the growth and development of 
 English society, that boys of families and of proT 
 fessions the most widely diverse, should be thrown 
 
PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION. 13 
 
 together at our Public Schools. It is a benefit, I 
 think, to the harmony and to the breadth of our 
 statesmanship, that the poor curate working ob- 
 scurely in his remote country parish, and the 
 brilliant journalist who wields the force of public 
 opinion, and the college don in his quiet quad- 
 rangle, and the Manchester man building up his 
 vast fortune in the counting-house, and the eloquent 
 Radical member for some city borough, and the 
 silent miUionaire nobleman who flings the whole 
 weight of his influence on the side of Conservatism, 
 should still have this friendly bond of sympathy 
 between them, that at school they each found their 
 own level or realized their own worth, and that one 
 was the other's fag, and that they joined in shouting 
 for the victory of their common house in the green 
 and sunny cricket-field, and passed under the in- 
 fluence of the same associations and interests, and 
 that, however widely they may now be separated, 
 they loved and esteemed each other in those days 
 as equals and friends. In broadening the views, 
 in knitting together the sympathies of brother 
 Englishmen, even amid such din of controversies 
 and strife of parties as may be raging at this 
 moment, or will soon be raging, within the walls of 
 St. Stephen's, such ameliorating influences are not, 
 I think, to be despised. 
 
]4 ON SOME DEFECTS IN 
 
 2. And, again, as far as regards moral education, I 
 
 give my most sincere and honest opinion when I 
 
 say we have good reason to be thankful. Be it 
 
 remembered that we have to deal with a difficult 
 
 and impetuous period of life ; with that perilous 
 
 age— 
 
 " When young Dionysus seems 
 All joyous as he burst upon the East 
 A jocund and a welcome conqueror ; 
 And Aphrodite sweet as from the sea 
 She rose, and floated in her pearly shell 
 A laughing girl." 
 
 Let any one consider how difficult must be the 
 task of governing that wilful age, and then let him 
 visit some great school, and note the admirable 
 discipline, the cordial relations between master 
 and scholar, the manly bearing, free at once from 
 presumptuous forwardness and servile timidity; 
 and then, further, the reverent attention to the 
 religious services, and the number of hushed and 
 youthful partakers of the Lord's Supper, — and few, 
 I think, will refuse to admit that, by God's blessing, 
 we have in large measure ennobled and purified the 
 once unhealthy moral atmosphere of our Public 
 Schools. Some, indeed, there are, and will ever be, 
 who, in spite of the many kindly and solemn warn- 
 ings they receive, learn there but few lessons save 
 those of sin and sorrow; but the majority, by their 
 
P UBLIC SCHOOL ED UCA TION. \ 5 
 
 high tone of honour and principle, and by that 
 deeply encouraging growth of Christian character 
 which marks their progress from form to form, 
 show that the most high-spirited boys may be 
 guided by a thread, when they are guided by gen- 
 tlemen and by Christians, as well as by scholars, 
 and when the sincere and simple spirit of religion 
 is made to bear — not in the shape of dead dogmas, 
 but in the shape of living principles — upon the 
 whole tenor of their lives. 
 
 3. Nor — once more — if we turn to the physical 
 training of our boys, shall we find any errors — at 
 any rate on the side of omission. If the end and 
 aim of physical training be health, vigour, and 
 activity, few will think it neglected when they see 
 the healthy colour, and high spirits, and well-knit 
 frames, which among our Public School boys are 
 not the exception, but the rule. The only question 
 could be whether in this direction we have not gone 
 too far. I would leave ample margin for our hours 
 of play ; I look with the heartiest sympathy on 
 the flourishing of our manly sports ; I know the 
 value and beauty of a keen glance, a strong arm, 
 and swift feet, and I rejoice to see the racquet-court, 
 the cricket-field, and the rifle-range thronged with 
 emulous competitors ; but I must not hesitate to 
 say, that in some instances we have pushed our 
 
16 ON SOME DEFECTS IN 
 
 admiration for these things to extravagant and 
 disastrous lengths. When we commonly see boys 
 ready to sacrifice everything to cricket ; when we 
 see them devoting to it a number of hours, and an 
 amount of enthusiasm, out of all proportion to 
 that expended on their work ; when we find their 
 thoughts so thoroughly coloured and moulded by 
 it that they talk cricket, think cricket, and dream 
 cricket, morning, noon, and night; it is hardly 
 surprising to find many who complain that this 
 mania of muscularity has its share in the hunger- 
 bitten poverty of our intellectual results, and tends 
 to account for the fact that the value of the work 
 we get out of the rnass of boys is, as Mr. Gladstone 
 puts it, " scandalously small." Let us by all means 
 make our boys good animals if we can; let us 
 train them to patient endurance and hardy 
 strength; let us teach them (if we can teach 
 them) to scorn the ever-growing tendency to 
 luxury and extravagance ; but let us at the same 
 time impress on them, that to be good animals is a 
 contemptible result if it does not conduce to their 
 being better, more thoughtful, and nobler men. It 
 is hardly satisfactory that the child of nineteen 
 Christian centuries, " the heir of all the ages in 
 the foremost files of time," should spend all his 
 energies, and all his admiration on the attainment 
 
PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION. 1/ 
 
 of those corporeal attributes in which, let him do 
 his best, the brute and the savage will beat him still. 
 
 4, I now turn to that part of my task which is at 
 once the most difficult and the most immediately 
 important — I mean the Intellectual Education of 
 our Public Schools. And here I shall doubtless cut 
 against the grain of a hundred prejudices, and draw 
 upon my head a storm of opposition. Be it so, if I 
 thereby hasten the victorious purpose which so 
 many have at heart. About my own insignificance 
 the storm may roar as loudly as it will, if thereby it 
 " lash into motion those lazy clouds " that have 
 stagnated so long on our educational horizon. Nor 
 will I deprecate it further than by saying that no 
 one has a right to resent the straightforward avowal 
 of a conviction derived from long experience ; and 
 that, as I speak without arrogance and without 
 censoriousness, I claim the privilege, as indeed I 
 have earned the right, to speak also with perfect 
 plainness. 
 
 I must, then, avow my own deliberate opinion, — 
 arrived at in the teeth of the strongest possible bias 
 and prejudice in the opposite direction, — arrived 
 at with the fullest possible knowledge of every 
 single argument which may be urged on the other 
 si{Je^__X must avow my distinct conviction that our 
 present system of exclusively classical education 
 
 B 
 
18 ON SOME DEFECTS IN 
 
 as a whole, and carried out as we do carry it out, 
 is a deplorable failure. I say it, knowing that the 
 words are strong words, but not without having 
 considered them well ; and I say it, because that 
 system has been "weighed in the balances and 
 found, wanting." It is no epigram, but a simple 
 fact to say, that Classical Education neglects all . 
 the powers of some minds, and some of the powers 
 of all minds. In the case of the few it has a 
 value, which being partial, is unsatisfactory ; in the 
 case of the vast multitude, it ends in utter and 
 irremediable waste. On the theory of the con- 
 vertibility of force, something, I suppose, must 
 come of the energies expended on our ordinary 
 teaching; but at present a large portion of them 
 seems to me as entirely wasted, as the sunbeams 
 which waste their vivifying influence in scorching the 
 desert sands. " We pour this kind of knowledge," 
 says Mr. Ruskin, " on one and all alike, like snow 
 upon the Alps, and are proud if here and there a 
 river descends from their crests into the valleys, 
 forgetting that we have made the loaded hills 
 themselves barren for ever'.' 
 
 The proofs of the fact are now but too patent in 
 the faithful report of eminent and most friendly 
 commissioners. For after diligent, anxious, and 
 repeated study of the four thick blue volumes in 
 
PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION. 19 
 
 which their laborious investigations lie buried from 
 the public ken, I can draw from them no other con- 
 clusion than that which may be summed up in 
 these few words : That but a small proportion of 
 our boys, say twenty-five per cent., go to the Uni- 
 versities ; that yet the entire curriculum of our 
 Public Schools is framed with a view to the Uni- 
 versities ; and that even of this poor twenty-five per 
 cent, who are as it were the very flower and fruit of 
 the system, and if I may so phrase it, its raison 
 d'itre, — a considerable number (many would be in- 
 clined to say the larger number) leave school at 
 the age of eighteen or nineteen, not only ignorant 
 of history, both ancient and modern, ignorant of 
 geography and chronology, ignorant of every single 
 modern language, ignorant of their own language 
 and often of its mere spelling, ignorant of every 
 single science, ignorant of the merest elements of 
 geometry and mathematics, ignorant of music, 
 ignorant of drawing, profoundly ignorant of that 
 Greek and Latin to which the long ineffectual years 
 of their aimless teaching have been professedly 
 devoted ; and we may add, besides all this, and 
 perhaps worst of all, completely ignorant of — 
 altogether content with — their own astonishing and 
 consummate ignorance.* Or, in other words — for 
 
 * See Appendix A. 
 B 2 
 
20 ON SOME DEFECTS IN 
 
 here I am but translating into a little plainer lan- 
 guage the courteous euphemisms of the com- 
 missioners — we have this fact : — During ten or 
 twelve, or even more, of the best, the most vigor- 
 ous, the most plastic, and the brightest years of life, a 
 multitude of boys have been mainly, at some schools 
 almost exclusively, occupied with Greek and Latin, 
 who yet at the end of those years not only know 
 nothing else, and not only are wholly careless to 
 learn anything else, but have profited so little even in 
 their Greek and Latin that they can neither write 
 a single correct sentence in either language, nor 
 stumble correctly through a single page of their 
 simplest authors without special previous prepara- 
 tion. On such a topic it would be useless to amplify ; 
 there, whether we like it or not, is the plain, naked, 
 unvarnished fact. If it startle us, I can only say 
 it ought to startle us ; if it is painful, I say that it 
 ought to be painful to any mind on which custom is 
 not lying with a weight " Heavy as frost, and deep 
 almost as death." If any one be prepared to ques- 
 tion it, the Commissioners will supply him with 
 ample proofs in both hands ; and any public school- 
 master could quadruple those proofs, if his eyes are 
 open, out of the experiences of a single year. The 
 Commissioners quote tutor after tutor of the Oxford 
 Colleges, and tutor after tutor of the Cambridge 
 
PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION. 21 
 
 Colleges, who come forward with dreary iteration 
 to say that the men are mostly men of excellent 
 principles and manners, but to numbers of whom 
 they freely apply the epithets "indolent," "un- 
 awakened," " inaccurate,'' " men of idle habits, and 
 empty uncultivated minds." And this, be it re- 
 membered, is the verdict on boys who go to the 
 University, the only body of whom the Com- 
 missioners had even an opportunity of forming a 
 judgment; and it suggests these two reflections: — 
 If these be the results in the case of boys for whom 
 the system was specially framed, what are we to 
 think of the rest ? And if these boys know nothing 
 of Greek and Latin in which for years they have 
 been assiduously taught, how unfathomable may be 
 their ignorance in subjects which they have never 
 been taught at all, or (as is the case with many 
 noble branches of knowledge) taught by an igno- 
 rant tradition to neglect and to despise ? 
 
 Facts . like these may have been unknown to all 
 but professional teachers at schools and universities 
 until the Commission revealed them, and until the 
 whole press of the United Kingdom, whether 
 friendly or unfriendly, whether religious, political, 
 educational, or scientific, had with appalling unani- 
 mity summed up the general result of the Report 
 of the Commissioners in the one ugly word. 
 
22 ON SOME DEFECTS IN 
 
 Failure. There was no escape from the plain con- 
 clusion ; yet the apathy with which it was accepted 
 strikes one with amazement. We know what the 
 years of boyhood are — how keen, how inquiring, 
 how full of life : we know what education can do ; 
 how it can stimulate exertion and store up know- 
 ledge, and give extraordinary energy to every 
 faculty and every sense. Is it then a matter of no 
 consequence that the intellectual powers of so 
 many fine and noble English boys should be 
 suffered to run to seed .' Is it the will of England 
 that her sons should grow up good oars, and good 
 cricketers, and profoundly ignorant men .-' While 
 science commands its thousands of eager, devoted, 
 enthusiastic workers, will England remain content 
 that the main effort of her education should end so 
 often in an atrophy of intelligence and knowledge t 
 Is education a mere trifling experiment made in 
 corpore vilif Is the mighty development, the 
 magnificent heritage of this and many centuries to 
 be left with an influence either nil or insignificant 
 in the teaching of our boys .' If people believe in 
 a classical education, do they believe in one which 
 may be nominally classical, but which ends with 
 such extreme frequency in a gigantic negation } 
 Will they listen to idle and flourishing rhetoric 
 about the graceful and godlike literature of Greece 
 
PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION. 23 
 
 and Rome, and then deceive themselves with the 
 illusion that this is the reward of lads who after an 
 indefinite term of years, could not speak two Latin 
 sentences, or construe Xenophon without a crib ? 
 Are we, in the nineteenth century, to learn no more 
 and to teach no more — nay, to attempt and to achieve 
 actually less — than was learnt by young Romans in 
 the school of Quintilian, or at best by Gregory and 
 Basil in the retirement of Athens ? The young 
 Greek learnt something of geometry ; the young 
 Roman something of law ; even the young monk 
 of the Middle Ages learnt in his meagre quadri- 
 vium some scraps of such science as was then to be 
 had. Are we alone to follow the example of the 
 Chinese in a changeless imitation of our ancestors, 
 and to confine our eager boys for ever between the 
 blank walls of an ancient cemetery, which contains 
 only the sepulchres of two dead tongues ? 
 
 Such questions crowd indignantly upon the 
 mind; and that they should admit of no answer 
 is a subject of simple astonishment. If English 
 people do not really care about the question — if 
 they are indifferent to knowledge, scorn ideas, and 
 despise Geist as a continental importation — then 
 there is an end of the matter ; but if, undeceived 
 at length, they begin to realize that a solely clas- 
 sical education even for the few who succeed in it 
 
24 ON SOME DEFECTS JN 
 
 is not the best, while for the multitude who fail, it 
 ends in no Latin, no Greek, and nothing else : then 
 it is full time for their voice to be heard. The mighty- 
 stream of public opinion must be brought to bear 
 upon universities and schools, and if they cannot 
 be aided from within they must be coerced from 
 without, to modify a curriculum which has long 
 been too narrow and antiquated, and is now de- 
 monstrably unsuccessful. In a scientific age their 
 studies ought not to be solely literary : in a pro- 
 gressive, practical, and earnest age they must not 
 be suffered to remain stationary, fantastic, and pre- 
 eminently pagan. 
 
 That Greek and Latin — taught in a shorter 
 period, and in a more comprehensive manner — 
 should remain as the solid basis of a liberal edu- 
 cation, we are all (or nearly all) agreed : none can 
 hold such an opinion more strongly than myself : 
 but why can it not be frankly recognized that an 
 education confined to Greek and Latin is a failure, 
 because it is an anachronism ? It has outlived its 
 time. It is utterly out of harmony with the spirit 
 of the age. It may have been all very well three 
 centuries ago, but is it to remain unaltered after 
 three centuries, which in the history of the human 
 race have the importance of thirty ? * This is an 
 * See H. Rigault, CEuvres Completes, ii. p. 150. 
 
PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION. 25 
 
 age of progress, and we keep spinning round and 
 round on the same pivot ; an age of observation 
 and experiment, and we keep bowing and scraping 
 to mere authority ; an age, as Professor Huxley 
 has said, " full of modern artillery, and we turn out 
 our boys to do battle in it, equipped with the sword 
 and shield of an ancient gladiator." Its continuance 
 is due, not to its importance, but mainly, as the Com- 
 missioners admit, to custom and prescription ; and 
 now the new wine is bursting the old bottles. The 
 days when men were grateful to a literature which 
 had unshackled them from the fetters of scholas- 
 ticism — that heroic age of classical studies when 
 in spite of bad food, bad lodging, straw beds, and 
 eternal horrible floggings, youths came on foot vast 
 distances to crowd the school of a Temp^te — the 
 days when such men as Erasmus and Stondonck, 
 after toiling out the daylight, mounted a clock- 
 tower to study still by the gratuitous moonbeams 
 — the days when Ronsard and Baif occupied one 
 bedroom, and rose, one after the other, in turns, 
 long after midnight, to go shares in their single 
 candle and keep the same spot warm ; those days 
 have gone by for ever, and we can neither reproduce 
 their acquisitions, nor galvanize them into life. 
 People see now, as Montaigne's father saw more 
 than three hundred years ago, that a scholar may 
 
26 ON SOME DEFECTS IN 
 
 cost much too dear ; and they are beginning to see 
 that to produce your scholar here and there, you 
 are apt to sacrifice multitudes of minds no less 
 gifted, it may be far more gifted, than his. The 
 complaint is no new one. " It is deplorable," says 
 the poet Cowley, himself a brilliant scholar, " to 
 consider the loss which children make at most 
 schools, employing, or rather casting away, six or 
 seven years in the learning of words onl)"-, and that 
 very imperfectly." " We do amiss," says John 
 Milton — a man whose opinion is of infinite im- 
 portance, not only for his immense learning and 
 splendid imagination, but also because he stands 
 out of nineteen Christian centuries as one of the 
 grandest ideals of a noble and cultivated manhood 
 — "We do amiss to spend seven or eight years 
 merely in scraping together so much miserable 
 Greek and Latin, as might be learnt otherwise 
 easily and delightfully in one year.'' " Would not 
 a Chinese who took notice of our way of breeding," 
 says John Locke, "be apt to imagine that all our 
 young gentlemen were designed to be teachers and 
 professors of the dead languages of foreign coun- 
 tries, and not to be men of business in their own V 
 After three such testimonies I need hardly add 
 more ; but I could easily produce a catena of over- 
 whelming testimony in the same direction of our 
 
PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION. "27 
 
 best and greatest men ; from these down to 
 Whewell and Macaulay, and that great, good Prince, 
 who has many a time sat in that chair, and whose 
 wisdom and foresight we only then began to ac- 
 knowledge, when he was far beyond the reach of our 
 ungrudging censure and our niggardly applause. 
 And that voice would be swelled not only by the 
 all but unanimous testimony of our greatest men 
 of science — the Herschels, the Tyndalls, the Hux- 
 leys, the Faradays — but also by a vast crowd of 
 our living statesmen, orators, philosophers, and 
 poets ; nay more, from both our Universities, by 
 some of the very best and profoundest scholars of 
 the present day. It should be a significant sign to 
 our educational conservatives that within this very 
 year two such statesmen and thinkers as Mr. Lowe 
 and Mr. Mill — the one eminent as a scholar, the 
 other as a philosopher — should both have spoken 
 of the main staple of our Pubhc School education 
 with scathing and undisguised contempt. Im- 
 penetrable as the deaf and sluggish majesty of 
 prescription, and serene as the dull self-compla- 
 cency of routine may be, it is impossible not to 
 hope that, assaulted by such batteries as these, 
 routine and prescription are beginning to totter to 
 their fall. 
 
 I have less, however, to do with any general 
 
28 ON SOME DEFECTS IN 
 
 cause for the failure of our system, than with two 
 special ones of which I wish particularly to speak. 
 I mean, first, the fact that some of our existing 
 methods are so disagreeable and illogical as to clog 
 all progress, even in our narrow path, with difficulties 
 all but insuperable, even when we have absorbed 
 an inordinate length of time ; and secondly, that 
 we have hitherto coldly refused, or but partially 
 admitted, an alliance with those fruitful scientific 
 studies, which can put forth a claim to reverence 
 far prouder than our own, and which would have 
 given our own studies material assistance by the 
 very act of making room for more. 
 
 First, then, I believe that one of the reasons 
 why classical studies lie across the path of edu- 
 cation, unprogressive themselves and a hindrance 
 to all other progress, is the present superstitious 
 devotion to Greek and Latin composition, and the 
 present irrational mode of studying grammar. It 
 is in this direction that our reform must be most 
 radical and most imperative. 
 
 That nebulous halo of admiration which for many 
 years has so densely enshrouded Greek and Latin 
 composition, and which has given to their pro- 
 portions as seen through the mist a sort of in- 
 definite and colossal grandeur, was perhaps the 
 cause why the Royal Commissioners expressed no 
 
PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION. 29 
 
 word of reprobation against their pursuit, and 
 neither sought nor elicited any evidence condemna- 
 tory of their practice. To myself, trained in the 
 system for years, and training others in it for years, 
 — being one of those who succeeded in it, if that 
 amount of progress which has been thought worthy 
 of high classical honours in two Universities may 
 be called success, — influenced therefore by every 
 conceivable prejudice of authority, experience, and 
 personal vanity in its favour, — I can only give my 
 emphatic conclusion that every year the practice of 
 it appears to me increasingly deplorable, and the 
 theory of it every year increasingly absurd. Any 
 facility which I may myself have attained in it I 
 hold exceedingly cheap ; I should estimate its 
 value as simply nought in any inventory of my 
 intellectual possessions. The utterly extravagant 
 value attached to Greek and Latin verse, and the 
 utterly untenable arguments urged in its favour, 
 are irritating enough ; but with me all minor irri- 
 tation is lost in deep pain and regret, when year 
 after year I see boys of eighteen and nineteen who 
 have been working for ten years or more at Latin 
 verses under conscientious and able teachers, and 
 who at the end of that time are unable to produce 
 one single line that is not flagrantly incorrect 
 and intolerably odious to every reasonable mind. 
 
30 ON SOME DEFECTS IN 
 
 Almost daily it is my fortune to see poor boys 
 ploughing barren poetic fields in the shape of verse- 
 books with a grammar and a dictionary " unequally 
 yoked together like ox and ass." This is the kind 
 of thing they have to turn into Latin elegiacs, — 
 for instance (to give only a favourable specimen), 
 this lucid address to the sun : — 
 
 " Thou, midmost of our world, I narrate wonders, 
 Rulest stars, lest they should wander, laws being broken." 
 
 Or this : — 
 
 " The fiery steed, his tail in air proudly cocked, 
 Not without much neighing, traverses glad pastures. '' 
 
 This is the sort of " kelp and brickdust " used to 
 polish the cogs of their mental machinery ! And 
 when for a good decade of human life, and those 
 its most invaluable years, a boy has stumbled on 
 this dreadful mill-round without progressing a single 
 step, and is plucked at his matriculation for Latin 
 prose, we flatter ourselves, forsooth, that we have 
 been giving him the best means for learning Latin 
 quantities, for improving taste (or what passes for 
 such !) and^credite fosteri ! — for acquiring the 
 niceties of Greek and Latin scholarship ! We resent 
 the nickname of the Chinese of Europe, yet our 
 education offers the closest possible analogue to 
 that which reigns in the Celestial empire, and for 
 centuries we have continued, and are continuing, a 
 system to which (so far as I know) no other civilised 
 
P UBLIC SCHOOL ED UCA TION. 3 1 
 
 nation attaches any importance, yet which leaves us 
 to borrow our scholarship second-hand from them ; 
 which is now necessary for the very highest classical 
 honours at the University of Cambridge alone ; in 
 which only one has a partial glimmering of success 
 for hundreds and hundreds wha inevitably fail; 
 and in which the few exceptional successes are so 
 flagrantly useless, that they can only be regarded 
 at the best as a somewhat trivial and fantastic ac- 
 complishment, — an accomplishment so singularly 
 barren of all results, that it has scarcely produced 
 a dozen original poems on which the world sets the 
 most trifling value, or which (as I believe) even a' 
 Bavius or a Maevius could have owned without a 
 blush. While we waste years in thus perniciously 
 fostering idle verbal imitations, and in neglecting 
 the rich fruit of ancient learning for its bitter, use- 
 less, and unwholesome husk — while we thus dwarf 
 many a vigorous intellect, and disgust many a 
 manly mind — while a great University, neglecting 
 in great measure the literature and the philosophy 
 of two great nations, contents itself with being, in 
 the words of one of its greatest sons, " a Bestower of 
 Rewards for Schoolboy Merit " — while thousands of 
 despairing boys thus waste their precious hours in 
 " contracting their own views and deadening their 
 own sensibilities " by a failure in the acquisition of 
 
32 ON SOME DEFECTS IN 
 
 the useless — while we apply this inconceivably irra- 
 tional process to Greek and Latin, and to no other 
 language ever yet taught under the sun — while we 
 thus accumulate instruction without education, and 
 feel no shame or compunction if at the end of 
 many years we thrust our youth in all their un- 
 armed ignorance through the open gate of life — 
 while, I say, such a system as this continues and 
 flourishes, which most practical men have long 
 scorned with an immeasurable contempt, do not 
 let us consider that we have advanced a single step 
 in reforming education, to reform which (in the 
 words of Leibnitz) is to reform society and to 
 reform mankind. 
 
 Do not imagine that any of these convictions are 
 new. If time permitted I could corroborate them 
 by multitudes of facts, maintain them with most 
 cogent arguments, and support them by the most 
 splendid authority, — if indeed authority be needed 
 to prove that an unique absurdity, condemned by 
 its unique failure, is irrational and wrong. Phillips 
 compared it to going from point to point in curved 
 lines. It is a " preposterous exaction," said Milton, 
 the greatest of all our Latin versifiers, no less than 
 one of our greatest men ; " these are not matters to 
 be wrung from poor striplings, like blood from the 
 nose, or the plucking of untimely fruit." "See 
 
PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION. 33 
 
 that your son be not employed in making themes, 
 neither verses of any kind," says the strong com- 
 mon-sense and manly wisdom of John Locke ; " it 
 is a sort of Egyptian tyranny," and " if he have 
 no poetic taste 'tis the most unreasonable thing in 
 the world to torment him and waste his time about 
 that which can never succeed." " Versification in a 
 dead language," says another eminent scholar — 
 Lord Macaulay — "is an exotic, z. far-fetched, costly, 
 sickly exotic. The soils on which the rarity 
 flourishes are in general as ill suited to the produc- 
 tion of native poetry as the flowerpots of a hothouse 
 to the growth of oaks." " It appears to me a cruel 
 absurdity" says Bishop Thirlwall, " to attempt to 
 forestall an imitative instinct ... by forcing young 
 boys through the hardest drudgery and at a great 
 expense of time, to wrap the vacancy of thought in 
 Ciceronian phrases, and to hammer nonsense into 
 Horatian metres." "To what purpose," asks Mr. 
 John Stuart Mill, in his recent great address at St. 
 Andrew's,* which I should like to see framed and 
 glazed in every schoolmaster's study, " should the 
 most precious years of early life be irreparably 
 squandered in learning to write bad Latin and 
 Greek verses } I do not see that we are much the 
 
 * I may perhaps be allowed to observe that the whole of my 
 Lecture (except this clause) was written before the delivery of Mr. 
 Mill's address. 
 
 C 
 
34 ON SOME DEFECTS IN 
 
 better even for those who end by writing good ones. 
 Can our favourites of fortune find no better or more 
 serious employment than these nugce difficiles? 
 Are we to pay this extravagant price for acquiring 
 the pernicious faculty of stringing together borrowed 
 phrases — a habit which a teacher should consider it 
 one of his first duties to repress ? " For myself, as 
 one who has seen the thing in actual working, I 
 will only add, that if one could but show the world 
 what the teaching of Latin verse practically amounts 
 to, and the kind of paltry pohie ^pithetique in which 
 at the best it practically ends, — if the verses written 
 in any one verse examination by any one school in 
 any one day were but laid before the world, with 
 the ages of the boys appended, and the number of 
 hours which the boys have spent for years in thus 
 not progressing a step in this enervating drudgery, 
 T firmly believe that the system would not last a week 
 longer, because then Englishmen would see — as 
 clearly as I know, that an ever-increasing number 
 of scholars and of schoolmaster^ have long seen — 
 that in sacrificing so much time and so many 
 branches of study to the non-achievement of this 
 puny accomplishment, is to make our sons slave in 
 the service of a huge gilt empty idol — it is to 
 worship a fly or a beetle, and daily to offer a heca- 
 tomb of costly oxen in sacrifice thereto.* 
 * See Appendix B. 
 
PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION. 35 
 
 I pass from our empty infructuous years of 
 
 Greek and Latin versemaking, to another blot 
 
 upon our system no less pernicious, — I mean the 
 
 illogical and indefensible way in which we teach 
 
 grammar. Here too, I believe, we have another 
 
 instance of — 
 
 " Blind authority beating with his staft 
 The child that might have led him." 
 
 Nothing can be more certain than that the com- 
 prehension of grammar comes after the mastery of 
 language ; that the science of grammar (for there 
 is such a science, and a noble one it is) is at once 
 abstruse and difficult, and that its deeply-seated 
 metaphysical principles are best attained by an 
 analysis of abundant linguistic facts already appre- 
 ciated. Yet what do we do } we try to build up a 
 boy's knowledge synthetically by plunging him at 
 once into a bewildering mass of intricate 'rules and 
 anomalous exceptions ; and instead of making him 
 understand these, we effectually prevent him from 
 ever learning them in any real sense by making 
 him learn them by rote : * and then, as though it 
 had been our express object to paralyze his own 
 intellectual powers, we shroud these mysterious 
 instructions in the very language which he is sup- 
 posed not to understand ! Well may Mr. Herbert 
 
 * " Sgavoir par cceur n'est pas sgavoir." — Motiiaigne. 
 C 2 
 
36 ON SOME DEFECTS IN 
 
 Spencer speak of " that intensely stupid practice, 
 the teaching of grammar to children." " Grammar," 
 sa}'^s Home Tooke (who surely was a good judge, 
 if any one was), " is among the first things taught, 
 and the latest understood." Yet what happens ? 
 what is happening at this moment to your little 
 sons t They are being " dragged through grammar 
 as through a cactus-bush," — being taught it in a 
 way which always reminds me of Judges viii. i6, 
 where it says that Gideon " took thorns of the wil- 
 derness, and briers, and with these he taught the 
 men of Succoth." They have been sent to a pre- 
 paratory school, where the two main implements 
 of education put into their innocent and unsuspect- 
 ing hands are a primer and a verse-book. The 
 verse-book is the kind of thing of which I have 
 given you a specimen ; the primer — that utterly 
 disastrous legacy of the commission which, in spite 
 of the strenuous opposition of many of us, is now 
 forced as a standard grammar upon nine great 
 public, and countless private schools — is a delightful 
 manual in which the little victim, not without amaze- 
 ment, learns by heart in Latin such a multitude of 
 lucid empiricisms as that " factitive verbs have two 
 accusatives, one of the object, the other of the 
 oblique complement."* Here, too, at the tender age 
 * See Appendix C. 
 
PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION. .-37 
 
 of eight or nine his young imagination is terrified, 
 often by ignorant men, with such incubi and suc- 
 cubi as " quid-quale verbs," "gerundive attractions," 
 "suboblique clauses," "spirants," "receptive com- 
 plements," " relations circumstantive and prolative," 
 " quasi-passives," "semi-deponents," and I know not 
 what, — which are hard enough for grown men to 
 understand, even if they do not despise this clatter 
 of pedantic (because needless) polysyllables, but 
 which to a child must be worse than " Gorgons, 
 and Hydras, and Chimeras dire." Imagine, ladies 
 and gentlemen, that at this moment you yourselves 
 were desirous to learn Arabic ; imagine an Arabic 
 grammar, with rules in Arabic, put into your hands; 
 imagine these Arabic rules clothed in a scholastic 
 terminology, and bristling with philosophical ab- 
 stractions, interspersed here and there with the 
 Castanet music of an abhorrent doggrel ; imagine 
 that the Arabic verb, like the Greek verb, had 
 twelve hundred synthetic forms, and that you had 
 to learn them every one by heart before proceed- 
 ing a step; imagine that this amazing sum-total 
 were forced on you in a solid and amorphous form; 
 perhaps by a wholly incompetent teacher who 
 repressed all questions at the point of the ferula ; 
 imagine this, and you have the very photograph 
 of what in very many cases is being done with 
 
38 ON SOME DEFECTS IN 
 
 your little sons in Greek and Latin. Can "the 
 theory of elementary unintelligibility" go farther 
 than this ? Would it be possible to be more ingenu- 
 ously out of harmony with all that is natural ? 
 After such a grievous waste of time, are you asto- 
 aiished at failure ? Are you surprised if your son, 
 thus suddenly introduced from the mid-sunlight of 
 his boyhood into these " yawning caves where 
 glaring monsters lie," and where, like the Indian 
 hunter, he is forced into chronic indigestion by 
 feeding on dry Greek roots, — are you astonished if 
 he revolts and succumbs altogether ? — Or, should 
 he be courageous and lucky enough to emerge uh- 
 dazed, retires for life into what Sidney Smith calls 
 " the safe and elegant imbecility of classical learn- 
 ing,'' with a confirmed habit for " credulously 
 swallowing millstones with passive obedience," — 
 crammed with dead words, but unapt for living 
 inquiry, — with plenty of second-hand knowledge 
 reflected and refracted through the semi-opaque 
 medium of books, but with a sight too bedimmed 
 in this long darkness to gaze on the sun-bright 
 and unveiled countenance of truth. " There is no 
 study," says Professor Halford Vaughan, "that 
 could prove more successful in producing often 
 thorough idleness and vacancy of mind, parrot-like 
 repetition and sing-song knowledge, to the abey-' 
 
PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION. 39 
 
 ance and destruction of the intellectual powers, as 
 well as to the loss and paralysis of the outward 
 senses, than our traditional study and idolatry of 
 language." 
 
 But, if this be so with the successful, what are 
 the results with the unsuccessful ? Ask our modern 
 writers of genius, and they will point to the ambi- 
 tion, the dissipation, the restlessness of our wealthier 
 classes. Ask our parents, and they will sigh over 
 the vacant hours spent in lounging in the billiard- 
 room and the stable-yard. Ask our schoolmasters, 
 and they will deplore the number of dunces and 
 idlers whom they produce. Ask our most zealous 
 and earnest college tutors, and they will tell of 
 undergraduates who regard their royal and sacred 
 seats of learning as luxurious and fashionable 
 clubs, — of torpid minds that either do not care to 
 read enough for the most elementary examinations, 
 or only cram through them with infinite difficulty 
 and disgust. Contrast this languishing inefficiency 
 of unprogressive studies, with the keen, passionate, 
 eager, undaunted enthusiasm wherewith thousands 
 of minds, hitherto untrained, are flinging their 
 whole energy into the toils of science, and thereby 
 adding year by year to the fair sum of human 
 knowledge ; and then ask if the nature of our 
 studies be not to blame .? " I do not wonder," sayi 
 
40 ON SOME DEFECTS IN 
 
 Tanaquil Faber, who, at least, succeeded in making 
 his own daughter, Madame Dacier, one of the first 
 scholars of her day, " that one-half of our boys, 
 who go to schools, do become downright asses 
 rather than learned men." While, if you turn once 
 more to Milton's opinion, you will find that he sets 
 down barren hearts — a tendency " to live' in ease and 
 luxury," and "an ambitious, mercenary, or ignorantly 
 zealous divinity " — to the fact of boys " misspending 
 their prime youth at the Schools and Universities 
 in learning mere words," and being " deluded with 
 ragged notions and babblements, while they ex- 
 pected worthy and delightful knowledge." 
 
 With facts like these before us, how long, I ask, 
 are we to leave our education " sickening in this 
 muddy pool of conformity and tradition 1 " Are 
 we to go on for ever conjugating and declining, 
 and gerund-grinding, and Latin-verse manufac- 
 turing, "while the great world spins for ever down 
 the ringing grooves of change ? " I speak, be it ob- 
 served, in the highest interest of classics; I would 
 not abandon them as the basis of a Hberal edu- 
 cation ; I feel their abuse somewhat bitterly, only 
 because I know how great may be their proper use. 
 I am not one of that large and increasing multi- 
 tude who say that classical education is a barren 
 tree, and that the axe must be laid mercilessly at 
 
P UBLIC SCHO OL ED UCA TION. 4 1 
 
 its very root. I say on the contrary, that it is a fair 
 tree and a strong, and that if we cut off its dead 
 and unsightly branches, we may still leave its stem 
 in the tender grass of the field, and that men's 
 hopes and fears may still — 
 
 " Take shelter in 
 
 The fragrance of its complicated glooms, 
 
 And cool impleaclied twilights." 
 
 I know that the classics introduce us into a region 
 of virtues in which our modern life is meanest and 
 most meagre. I should hold it disastrous to disin- 
 tegrate ourselves altogether from the past, and to 
 break the chain of its noble associations. But this 
 is the precise effect which is now being produced by 
 the wretched baldness and poverty of our system. 
 The worst enemies of classical education are those 
 who would stereotype its present imbecility. I am 
 no enemy, but a sincere and humble supporter of 
 classical education properly supplemented and pro- 
 perly understood. That against which I have been 
 pleading is not knowledge of the classics, but 
 ignorance of their entire spirit ; not classics, but the 
 degradation of classics ; not the thoughts of the 
 ancients enshrined in their noblest literature, but 
 a paltry stringing together of the artificial phrases 
 of their rhetoric ; not a sound learning, but a 
 shallow simulacrum of superiority ; not mental 
 training, but a mere knack acquired by desultory 
 
42 ON SOME DEFECTS IN 
 
 reading and incessant practice ; a peacock's feather, 
 which, though it has often been a proof of intel- 
 lectual rank, yet often waves over very empty 
 skulls — a trick so difficult and so useless that it 
 averts robust minds from all classical study, and is 
 capable (on the published confession of some of 
 its best representatives)* of coexisting with a pro- 
 found ignorance on all subjects, ancient as well as 
 modern. These are not the results of classical 
 teaching in any high and noble sense ; but of its 
 fantastic abuse by methods which our best and 
 wisest men have combined in denouncing as 
 glaringly irrational and curiously bad. 
 
 But further, and lastly, I would ask, if this Idol > 
 of the Theatre is still to be worshipped, how long 
 shall its service be so exclusive as now it is } How- 
 ever high we are to place classics, are we still to 
 act as though they were the sole end and aim of 
 education, and as though men had neither the 
 faculties nor the thirst for any other kind of know- 
 ledge .'' Are we never to get rid of this bed of 
 Procrustes, which for some is inordinately long, for 
 some intolerably short.' I allude of course to 
 that second special cause for the failure of our 
 system, in the short-sighted neglect which has 
 
 * See Public Schools Commission Report, ii. 43, 44, 50 ; Cam- 
 bridge Commission Report, p. 293. 
 
PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION. 43 
 
 suffered our boys to grow up in total ignorance 
 of, sometimes in disgraceful contempt for, every 
 scientific pursuit. In an age which is emphatically 
 the age of science, 
 
 " 'Mid the mighty march of mind, 
 The steamship, and the railway, and the thoughts that shake 
 manldnd," 
 
 a boy has been suffered to know nothing of the 
 world of wonder, of beauty, and of power, in which 
 his lot is cast.* What has science achieved within 
 this century .'' She has made the shattering force 
 of the electric spark obediently speed her messages 
 through the heart of iron mountains, and under the 
 waves of raging seas ; she has kindled her silver 
 beacons on the wave-tormented crags, as though to 
 light up an avenue to her palace front; she has 
 enabled the sailor to steer in safety amid the 
 breaker's wintry surge, and the miner to work 
 in safety amid the blasting fire-damp of the mine ; 
 she has drawn the forked lightning in harmless 
 splendour out of the purple cloud ; she has dis- 
 covered the precious anodyne which lulls the 
 senses into calm and dreamless sleep, while the 
 work of agony, agonising no longer, is wrought 
 upon the human frame; with a scratch of her 
 lancet she has stayed the loathsome ravages 
 
 * See Aopendix D. 
 
44 ON SOME DEFECTS IN 
 
 of disease ; she has forced upon reluctant selfish- 
 ness, and branded into the brain of invincible 
 ignorance, those beneficent laws which paralyse 
 the fury of the pestilence, and restore health and 
 buoyancy to the factory and the hut ; — all this, and 
 more, she is doing, and has done ; and the history 
 of her discoveries, and the knowledge of the 
 methods she has used in all this majestic sorcery, 
 would, I take it, be almost as useful, and would 
 effect as much for the human race, as the most 
 delicate appreciation of the particle 76, or even as 
 an approximate knowledge of the uses of av with 
 the moods ! Oh, if the world is to be transformed 
 for our boys into the cave I have described, at 
 least suffer them to look round upon it, and enter 
 it torch in hand : — 
 
 " And bid with lifted torch its starry walls 
 Sparkle, as erst they sparkled, to the glow 
 Of odorous lamp tended by saint and sage ! " 
 
 It would give reality, it would give utility, it would 
 give happiness to their education. It would give 
 reality. Our present system does not represent the 
 existing state of knowledge. It deals with names, 
 not things ; with grammar, not facts ; with books, 
 not phenomena. It learns, but does not acquire ; 
 it imitates, but does not observe. With a Paradise 
 open before us, it fumbles at the old and costly 
 
PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION. 45 
 
 key of a second-hand knowledge. It acts as though 
 God had turned His creatures into a world in which 
 there was no such thing as education until Greece 
 and Rome emerged. What wonder that our boys 
 have ceased to feel all relation between these dead 
 and barren vocables and their bright and living 
 world } We have not enlisted among them the 
 services of what Dr. Brown calls " that resident 
 teacher within the skin " who is for ever giving his 
 lessons while we are giving ours. Our boys are 
 getting weary of Horace and Ovid : — 
 
 " Earth outgrows the mythic fancies 
 Sung beside her in her youth ; 
 And those debonnaire romances 
 Sound but dull beside the truth ; 
 Phoebus' chariot-course is run ! 
 Look up, poets, to the sun ; — 
 Pan, Pan, is dead ! " 
 
 Then it would give our education more usefulness. 
 I use the word in no vulgar or sordid sense. I do 
 not only mean professionally — though surely that 
 is not wholly unimportant ; nor do I mean by the 
 stimulus to great philanthropic discoveries, though 
 that too ought not to be despised ; but I mean 
 morally, and socially, and intellectually as well. To 
 speak of the benefit of scientific knowledge to our 
 physicians, our barristers, our engineers, our soldiers, 
 our country gentlemen, would be waste of time, and 
 owing to a deeply-seated stupidity I have never 
 
, 46 ON SOME DEFECTS IN 
 
 been able to see anything specially glorious in inu- 
 tility per se. But it is worth while to take the 
 single instance of the use of science to our clergy. 
 Seeing that the Bible, in page after page, to say 
 nothing of whole books of it, is constantly occupied 
 in directing profound attention to the power of God 
 as proved by the magnificence of His Creation, — 
 seeing that the Saviour of the world points, as the 
 special proofs of God's love, to His care for the 
 mountain lily, and the falling sparrow, and the 
 raven's callow brood, — is not our education, and 
 especially that of our clergy, distinctly irreligious 
 in neglecting these things, and in elevating the poor 
 words of man, as an instrument of training, un- 
 measurably above the mighty works of God ? And 
 with what results ? It would be hardly possible to 
 exaggerate their disastrous importance. Not only 
 do the clergy, who should be the leaders of thought, 
 lose the advantage of assisting in a thousand ways 
 their poorer parishioners, but they find themselves 
 actually inferior in these great fields of knowledge 
 to many clerks and artisans in their own congre- 
 gations, before whom they cannot venture to speak 
 of them without the danger of raising a con- 
 temptuous smile. This, however, is the least part 
 of the evil. Science has interpenetrated to a won- 
 derful degree the thoughts, the speculations, nay 
 
PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION. 47 
 
 even the common literature of the age, and yet the 
 clergy are wholly out of sympathy with it ; in many 
 instances are suspicious of it ; in many more are its 
 bitter and ignorant opponents. Scarcely has there 
 been an eminent philosopher, from Roger Bacon 
 down to Comte, — scarcely an eminent discoverer, 
 from Galileo down to Darwin, who has not counted 
 the clergy among his most ruthless opponents. I 
 challenge denial of the fact. Against astronomy, 
 against zoology, against chemistry, against geo- 
 logy, against ethnology, against philology, — against 
 well-nigh every nascent science in its turn — has 
 theological arrogance and self-styled orthodoxy 
 marshalled their menacing array of misinterpreted 
 or inapplicable fragments of Holy Writ. Just as of 
 old " fops refuted Berkeley with a sneer," so now 
 some young ordained B.A. finds it easy to crush 
 Darwin with a text. Is it, I ask, uncommon to 
 hear some ignorant clergyman who has laboriously 
 scraped into a poll degree, lay down the law as 
 though he held the keys of all knowledge in his 
 hand, and could afford to pity and look down upon 
 those splendid students, whose lives have been one 
 long-continued heroism of candour and research } 
 You may say that an opposition of this calibre 
 usually ends in some complacent avowal of the 
 ardent friendship between science and theology, 
 
48 ON SOME DEFECTS IN 
 
 and in the acceptance as axiomatic truisms of what 
 had previously been denounced as atheistical and 
 absurd. But meanwhile, what happens ? Men 
 of science, confounding religion with the ana- 
 chronisms of its most feeble and most violent ex- 
 pounders, too often hold aloof from a Church whose 
 inmost heart is intensely truthful, — a Church which 
 well knows the delight that deeply religious minds 
 have ever felt in reverent inquiry into the laws of 
 God, and which sees more of her own real spirit in 
 the patient labours of science than in unprogressive 
 idleness and theological hate. 
 
 The remedy is simple. Let the boys who are to 
 become our clergy be trained, if it be but in one 
 single science ; let them see the stern and simple 
 accuracy of its methods ; let them observe the sin- 
 gleness of its eye for truth, and truth alone ; — let 
 them mark its inevitable progress over triumphant 
 errors ; — let them be initiated in the labour, the 
 sincerity, the patience, the self-devotion, the pre- 
 cision of thought which it requires, — and then we 
 shall hear no more of the preposterous falsehood 
 that science is inimical to true religion, and see no 
 more of men who prefer anathema to inquiry, — 
 who rather than sit at God's feet, and learn the 
 great laws which He reveals to the humble and to 
 the patient, prefer to gyrate round and round in the 
 
PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION. 49 
 
 petty circle of one-thousandth-hand expositions, or, 
 if I may borrow an old simile, to make long voyages 
 in the belly of Jonah's whale, — traversing immense 
 distances but seeing nothing in the world. It is my 
 solemn belief, and a belief that I am neither afraid 
 nor ashamed to avow, that the scepticism so often 
 laid to the charge of science, is in reality the 
 necessary result of its neglect. 
 
 In conclusion, I confidently look to an education 
 in science for a considerable increase of youthful 
 happiness. How do many boys regard their school- 
 hours } Chiefly as time spent in the close atmo- 
 sphere of a dull room over verbal disquisitions for 
 which they care little, and verbal imitations for 
 which they care still less. If you would have them 
 progress in such studies, and believe in them, you 
 must superadd another education, which by enlisting 
 their sympathies, shall awake their dormant facul- 
 ties and save their decaying self-respect. You must 
 teach the boy who fails in classics that the authority 
 of long words in crabbed books is not the only 
 source of knowledge ; that he can use his untrained 
 senses as the gateways for a thousand forms of in- 
 struction ; that the theory which strove to make 
 teaching unpleasant was an odious and unnatural 
 heresy ; and that his education, so far from ceasing, 
 is but being continued (if he so wills it) with greater 
 
 D 
 
50 ON SOME DEFECTS IN 
 
 intensity when with open eyes and senses keenly 
 observant he is living under the blue temple-roof of 
 heaven, — storing his cabinet with the gorgeous and 
 delicate loveliness of shells and butterflies and eggs, 
 — or following the game on the mountain-side, ancle- 
 deep in purple heather, knee-deep in the tall green 
 ferns. Teach him that in every dewdrop brushed 
 away by his careless feet there slumbers the electric 
 flame ; teach him that there is no flower which he 
 can pluck, in the study of which he may not soon 
 reach those " flammantia mcenia mundi " over which 
 not even the eagle wing of science can soar ; teach 
 him that there is not the simplest phenomenon of 
 his daily life which does not involve for its explana- 
 tion the agency of the most marvellous and eternal 
 laws. Show him too that, when once taught to read 
 and write, and think, and use his senses, he has been 
 equipped in all the panoply wherewith the giants 
 of human intellect have made the elements of the 
 physical world their slaves ; that with no more potent 
 instrument than his own kite he may take the 
 lightning by the wing ; that in the falling of an 
 apple, and the swinging of a lamp, and the thoughts 
 of an idle boy as he watched the steam condensing 
 on the bowl of his silver spoon, and the twitching 
 of a dead frog's leg when it was touched by a 
 scalpel as it lay upon a plate, lay hid the secrets of 
 
PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION. 51 
 
 the rolling of the planets, and the mode in which 
 we mark the flight of time, and the rushing of the 
 railway engine, and the means whereby with 
 the simplest possible materials we can put a 
 girdle in a few seconds round the globe. Add 
 this to your classical system, and the frequency 
 of dunces will cease to be a commonplace of school- 
 masters. I dare not indeed use the strong language 
 of Milton, when he says, " I doubt not that ye shall 
 have more ado to drive our dullest and laziest 
 youth, our stocks and stubs, from the infinite desire 
 of such a happy nurture, than we have now to hail 
 and drag our hopefuUest and choicest wits to that 
 asinine feast of sow-thistles and brambles which is 
 commonly set before them as the food and enter- 
 tainment of their tenderest and most docile age : " 
 — but I do say with him that the path of a virtuous 
 and noble education is " so smooth, so green, so 
 full of goodly prospects and melodious sounds on 
 every side, that the harp of Orpheus was not more 
 charming," — I do say that the kind of education 
 which here I advocate will be fruitful of the 
 mightiest advantages both to England as a nation 
 and to thousands of her individual sons, — and that 
 
 it is 
 
 " Not harsh and rugged, as dull fools suppose. 
 But musical as is Apollo's lute, 
 And a perpetual feast of nectared sweets. 
 Where no crude surfeit reigns.'''' 
 
APPENDIX A. 
 
 ON THE FAILURE OF AN EXCLUSIVELY CLASSICAL 
 EDUCATION. 
 
 " In one word, we may say that the Commissioners find 
 Public School Education to be a failure."— 7%« Times, 
 March 28, 1864. 
 
 On this point I need only refer to the all but (if not 
 entirely) unanimous testimony of a large number of Oxford 
 and Cambridge tutors who gave evidence before the Com- 
 mission. The memorable resume of their investigations, as 
 given by the Commissioners themselves, may be found in 
 their Report, vol. i. p. 31 ; it contains, among many other 
 passages which should fill us with shame, the following 
 remark : — 
 
 " It follows that with a great mass of men, school educa- 
 tion — and that education one which barely enables them at 
 last to construe a Latin and Greek book, poet and orator, 
 chosen by themselves, to master three books of Euclid, and 
 solve a problem in quadratic equations— is prolonged to the 
 age of twenty or twenty-one!' 
 
 " It appears that after spending a great many years in 
 these educational institutions, the large mass come out with 
 a very good knowledge of cricket, . . . with only that sort of 
 knowledge of Latin and Greek which is perfectly useless in 
 
54 APPENDIX. 
 
 after life, and entirely destitute of mathematical, scientific, 
 - elementary truth, a knowledge of history and their own 
 country, which it must be admitted are desirable, if pos- 
 sible (!), to attain." — Earl Granville {Times, May 12, 
 1864). 
 
 " Nothing can be worse than this state cf things, when we 
 find modern languages, geography, history, chronology, and 
 everything else which a well-educated English gentleman 
 ought to know, given up in order that the full time should 
 be devoted to the classics ; and at the same time we are 
 told that the boys go up to Oxford not o?ily not proficient, 
 but in a lamentable state of deficiency with respect to the 
 classics." — Earl of Clarendon (speaking of the impression 
 left on his mind by the evidence given before the Commission). 
 
 " I entirely agree with you that the present system of 
 classical education, as a general method of training all 
 English gentlemen, is (in your words) a superstition, a 
 blunder, and a failure. . . . The Romans learned two living 
 languages, we pretend to learn two dead ones. I would 
 demand with you a general basis of true British, and Modern, 
 and Human education till the age of fourteen." — Professor 
 Blackie {Letter to Dr. Hodgson). 
 
 " The able men who reported upon Eton, and the other 
 public schools, two years ago, pointed out a legion of abuses 
 that earnestly called for amendment — proved indeed to de- 
 monstration that the whole existing system was rotten to its 
 core." — Grant Duff, Esq. M.P. 
 
 " It is a notorious fact, that of the British youths who 
 have gone through the long and compulsory drill of our 
 
APPENDIX. 55 
 
 grammar-schools, a vast majority carry with them from 
 school a very superficial acquaintance with the languages 
 they were sent thither to learn, and no desire to increase or 
 even to retain the slender stock they may have acquired." — 
 Professor Pillans in The Museum. 
 
 " A young man well imbued with the leading elements of 
 Athenian and Roman culture would, we need not fear to say, 
 be superior in intellectual discipline to three-fourths of the 
 young men of our own day on whom all the ordinaiy appli- 
 ances of what is called ' a good education ' have been 
 bestowed." — Dr. Whewell {Modern Culture, p. 179). 
 
 " Such additions (natural science, &c.) would prevent their 
 education from being so wretchedly poor and narrow, and 
 themselves from being so illiterate and ignorant, as they 
 often are." — Id. (Of a Liberal Education). 
 
 " They are ignorant of their ignorance at the end of all \ 
 that education."— Dr. M. Faraday {Evidence before Public 
 School Commission). 
 
 " Posterity will cry shame on us if we do not remedy this 
 deplorable state of things. Nay, if we live twenty years 
 longer our own consciences will cry shame on us." — PRO- 
 FESSOR Huxley {Modern Culture, p. 122). 
 
 " There is no obvious relation between a memory well 
 stocked with the words talked 2000 years ago, and an under- 
 standing disciplined to deal with modern society." — Herbert 
 Spencer {Education, p. 278). 
 
 " A large number of boys leave from our lower forms, and 
 to them our system does scant justice. . . . Such boys con- 
 
56 APPENDIX. 
 
 stantly leave school very imperfectly educated, with little 
 Latin and less Greek, with stagnant, ill-informed minds, if 
 ?iot with a great disrelish for study and application of all 
 kinds." — Rev. Dr. Evans, Head Master of Birmingham 
 School. 
 
 " Trop absolue, trop peu diverse, I'instruction classique ne 
 tient done pas assez de compte des tendances varides et des 
 ndcessit^s industrielles et commerciales de notre ^poque. . . . 
 lis [des jeunes gens qui sortent du college] sont supposes 
 propres k tout et trop generalement ils ne sont bons a rien. , . . 
 Les connaissances imparfaites qu'ils ont acquises ne sont sou- 
 "vent pour eux qu'un present inutile sinon funesteP — M. V. 
 DuKUY, Ministre de I'instruction Publique, 1866. 
 
 APPENDIX B. 
 
 ON THE USELESSNESS OF GREEK AND LATIN VERSE-WRITING. 
 
 We may add the splendid name of Bacon to the list of 
 those v^ho disapproved of studies merely verbal in their 
 character. Speaking of the " three vanities in studies," of 
 which the first is "fantastical learning," he has the following 
 passages : — 
 
 " For those things we do esteem vain which are either 
 false or frivolous, those which either have no truth, or no 
 use.'' 
 
 " This [the aiming at style and fluency] grew speedily to 
 an excess ; for men began to hunt more after words than 
 matter." " It seems to me that Pygmalion's frenzy is a good 
 emblem or portraiture of this vanity ; for words are but the 
 images of matter; and except they have life of reason or 
 
APPENDIX. 57 
 
 invention, to fall in love with them is all one as to fall in 
 love with a picture. . . . But the excess of this is so con- 
 temptible that . . . there is none of Hercules' followers in 
 learning, that is, the more severe and laborious as inquirers 
 after truth, but will despise those delicacies and ajfectations as 
 indeed capable of no divineness." — Advancement of Learn- 
 ing, vol. i. 
 
 "Then did Erasmus take occasion to make the scoffing 
 echo, 'Decern annos consumpsi in legendo Cicerone;' and 
 the echo answered in Greek, '"Ove."'- — Id. ib. 
 
 " Quid enim proficias ubi voces loquendigue formulas 
 in cerebrum constipatas ingesseris?" — Tib. Hemsterhusius 
 Orat. de Mathem. et Philosoph. Studio cum Lit. Human, 
 conjungendo, p. 214. [I am indebted for this, and one or two 
 Other extracts, to the earnest and valuable publications of 
 Dr. Hodgson, which, as I am glad to hear from him, will 
 shortly be collected and republished.] 
 
 " If I might advise, therefore, I would have boys kept 
 wholly from this kind of exercise. . . . The scribbling of paltry 
 wretched verses is no way for them to improve their parts 
 in." — ^J. Clark. 
 
 " We make use of verse-books. ... In our course of training 
 up to this point there are three stages ; the only advance 
 being that in the last stage there is not sufficient straw given 
 to make bricks, and the builder is driven to his Gradus to 
 search for stubble in the shape of epithets to eke out the 
 deficiency^—'' Quo Musa tendis ?" p. 8, by E. M. YouNG, 
 Fellow of Trin. Coll. Cambridge, and Assistant Master at 
 Harrow. 
 
58 APPENDIX. 
 
 " I have looked over the exercises ... of a boy who had 
 been a year at work upon iambics, of which it was impossible 
 to say whether they were intended for verse or prose." — Id. 
 p. 15. 
 
 "If anything in the whole world of the unreasonable pro- 
 ceedings of reasonable beings be artificial ... it is the artificial 
 forcing of Latin verses from crude English boys, who do not 
 yet know what verse means in their Own mother tongue ; 
 who, perhaps, from peculiarities of mental constitution, never 
 can know what verse means in any language ever spoken 
 by articulately-speaking men." — Professor Blackie {On 
 the Conversational Element in the Study of Language'). 
 
 " The most learned scholar that ever turned ' Jack Horner ' 
 into Greek, Latin, and Hebrew as easily as a child can 
 blow a soap-bubble, is, with all his scholarship, only a very 
 highly-gifted and exceedingly well-trained mocking-bird." — 
 Id. ib. 
 
 " I think it incontestably true that for the last fifty years 
 our classical studies have been too critical and formal. . . . 
 We may well doubt, whether the imagination and the taste 
 might not be more wisely cultivated than by a long sacrifice 
 to what, after all, ends but in verbal imitations^ — Rev. 
 Professor Sedgvitick, Vice-Master of Trinity College (iJ/j- 
 course on Cambridge Studies). 
 
 " I thought that students ought not to obtain University 
 honours for mere schoolboy studies." — Rev. Dr. Whewell, 
 Late Master of Trin. Coll. Cambridge, {Catnbridge Commis- 
 sion Report, p. 274 ; see, too, Public School Commission Re- 
 port, vol. ii. p. 43 segq.). 
 
APPENDIX. 59 
 
 " Many students are deterred from competing for classical 
 honours by the consideration of the great difficulty of ac- 
 quiring those accomplishments, which are valueless unless 
 acquired to a high point of perfection^ — Rev. Professor 
 Thompson, Master of Trin. Coll. Cambridge ijd. p. 287). 
 
 " Encouragement is thus given to a desultory habit of 
 reading, and to the cultivation of the taste (or what passes 
 for it) at the expense of the more solid and more useful 
 faculties of the mind. . . . Thus the attention could be 
 directed to such studies as tend to cultivate the robuster 
 mental faculties, and supply an antidote to the enervating 
 effects of Latin elegiac verses." — REV. E. M. COPE, Fellow 
 and Tutor of Trin. Coll. Cambridge {Id. p. 279). 
 
 " The supposed necessity of being able to write Greek and 
 Latin verse has an injurious effect in deterring some from 
 classical study altogether, and inducing others to bestow 
 much labour in attaining a moderate degree of power in 
 these exercises, which labour is to a great extent thrown 
 away!'' — Rev. E. Currey, Fellow and' Tutor of St. John's > 
 {Id p. 282). 
 
 " It is well known that facility in writing Latin verses is 
 acquired by long practice, frequently to the neglect of more 
 solid attaintnents, . . . and that it does not necessarily ittdicate 
 even good Latiti scholarship." — Ven. Archdeacon France, 
 Fellow and Tutor of St. John's College {Id. p. 284). 
 
 [As an illustration of the possible ignorance of excellent 
 verse-writers. Prof. D'Arcy Thompson says of Dr. Burney, 
 formerly Head Master of Christ's Hospital] : " He had a 
 loathing for all scientific s*udy ; was utterly ignorant of 
 
60 APPENDIX. 
 
 modern languages ; . . . English literature of the day to him 
 was non-existent. . . . All information, historical, antiquarian, 
 geographical, or philosophic he regarded with contempt ; " 
 and finally confessing that he did not know where Elis was, 
 observed to a pupil, " These Oxford fellows like this kind of 
 thing ; but I'll wager you'd get few of them to write a good 
 Porson ! " — Day-dreams of a Schoolmaster, p. 34. 
 
 " I had a stock of preludes, similes, and perorations stored 
 away in the pigeon-holes of my brain. . . . One sunset I have 
 by me still. . . . As the prelude to an ode on Lucretia it gained 
 m.e a prize in books at school; as a prelude to an ode on 
 The Moors in Spain it gained me a gold medal at Cam- 
 bridge^'' — Id. p. 18. 
 
 Dr. Whewell quotes the following testimony of a dis- 
 tinguished Cambridge scholar and Chancellor's Medallist 
 (generally believed to be Lord Lyttelton). He speaks of 
 "the total absence in the University examination of any 
 scientific and well-grounded knowledge on any classical subject 
 •whatever, not excluding language. For what was required, 
 and of course what was produced, was not knowledge but 
 skill. . . . No scientific knowledge of ancient history, philo- 
 sophy, antiquities, or philology was of the least importance. 
 ... It is a fact that any one might get anything up to the 
 Chancellor's Medal, without even a tolerable knowledge of 
 such subjects, for I did it." — Public School Commission Re- 
 port, vol. ii. p. 43. 
 
 " Pour que I'exercice des vers latins soit vraiment fruc- 
 tueux il faut qu'il aiUe jusqu'au point de soUiciter I'imagina- 
 tion et le goiit . . . . il faut s'etre mis en tete un bagage 
 d'he?nistiches, de synonymes et d''epithetes .... aujourd'hui. 
 
APPENDIX. 61 
 
 c'est ce qu'on ne peut attendre que d'un dcolier sur milk. 
 Done il faut prendre son parti de I' abandon du vers latin." 
 — M. COURNOT, Ancien Inspecteur-gdiidral des £tudes, &c 
 Des Instit. d' Instruct, publ. p. 71, 1864. 
 
 APPENDIX C. 
 
 ON THE IRRATIONAL STUDY OF GRAMMAR. 
 
 With the greatest respect for its eminent and accomplished 
 editor, I must frankly state my very strong conviction that 
 the introduction of the " Latin Primer" into the great Public 
 Schools Vizs, one of the most retrograde and disastrous steps 
 which have been taken of late years in our system of Clas- 
 sical Education. It is much to be regretted that the Com- 
 missioners should have recommended the adoption of a 
 Uniform Grammar. The objections to such a step were 
 of the most palpable description, and I have never met a 
 scholar yet who could give me a single sound reason for the 
 adoption of any one out of the many existing grammars, 
 except upon the pernicious assumption that grammar must 
 be taught by rote, and by persons who do not understand it ! 
 Independently, however, of this question, the " Latin Primer'' 
 appeared to me from the first to be a most unfortunate book 
 — hard, repellent, and singularly awkward. I have had op- 
 portunities of seeing how profoundly it tends to disgust 
 even clever and diligent boys, and it is quite certain that 
 there is a large body of eminent assistant-masters who will 
 always regard it with a singular dislike. It is well known 
 
62 APPENDIX. 
 
 that a memorial against its introduction was signed by a very- 
 large body of experienced masters at nearly all the schools, 
 as well as by many head-masters and scholars in every part 
 of England (including not a few senior classics, philologists, 
 and grammarians). It is on many grounds to be deplored 
 that this memorial, signed by so many distinguished scholars 
 and teachers, received no attention ; especially as it should 
 have been remembered that few, if any, of the nine head- 
 masters have had any experience in teaching grammar to 
 young boys. I believe that few will rejoice at the way in 
 which this grammar has been introduced, except those who 
 desire the speedy and total downfall of all Classical Edu- 
 cation. 
 
 " By Pedantry I mean a preposterous method of teaching 
 useless learning in spent futures oblivionis. For a boy that 
 has been accustomed to learn without book, hard gram- 
 matical terms, and Latin rules before he understands what 
 they mean . . . will ever be minding sound more than sense 
 or signification."— J. T. Phillips, Tutor to the Duke of 
 Cumberland {Ancient and Modern Languages, 1750, p. 3). 
 
 " A grammar that is designed for youth should be clear 
 and short, comprehending the flections of nouns and verbs, 
 and some of the most useful general rules, which might be 
 easily written or printed on one side of a sheet of paper^ — 
 Id. p. 108. 
 
 " Those grammatical flats and shallows where they stuck 
 unreasonably to learn a few words with lamentable construc- 
 tion." — Milton {Of Education. 1650). 
 
APPENDIX. 63 
 
 " Neither am I so foolish as to reject grammar, but would 
 only have it taught ... to persons who by ripeness of under- 
 standing are abl^ to comprehend the reasons thereof" — 
 R. Carew. 
 
 " But a better and nearer example herein may be our 
 most noble Queen Elizabeth, who never yet took Greek nor 
 Latin Grammar in her hand after the first declining of a 
 noun and a verb ; but . . . hath attained to such a perfect 
 understanding of both the tongues, and to such a ready 
 utterance of the Latin ... as there be few in number in both 
 the Universities or elsewhere in England, that be in both 
 
 tongues comparable to her Majesty." — Roger Ascham. 
 
 \ 
 
 " Nearly every subject dealt with is arranged in abnormal 
 order : definitions, and rules, and principles being put first, 
 instead of being disclosed, as they are in the order of nature, 
 through the study of cases." — Herbert Spencer {Educa- 
 tion, p. 30). 
 
 " It may without hesitation be affirmed that grammar is 
 not the stepping-stone, but the finishing instrument." — M. 
 Marcel. 
 
 " I am strongly opposed to what I conceive to be a most 
 false application of a true principle — namely, making children 
 learn Latin at a very early period of life, particularly . . . 
 through the medium of technical grammar. This, instead 
 of naturally and healthfully exercising the verbal memory 
 of a child, tends to overload it with a weight of barbarous 
 terms, all explanations of which imply a power of abstraction 
 quite beyond his years." — Dr. Jerrard, late Classical 
 Examiner at the University of London. 
 
64 APPENDIX. 
 
 " Rules are learned by the ear and by rote without any 
 digestion of the understanding : an habit is generated of 
 accepting and using words without an insight into their 
 meaning, and of applying principles in practice without a 
 thought of their real nature." — Professor Halford 
 Vaughan {Oxford Refor7iis and Oxford Professors, p. 28). 
 
 " I know hardly a single scholar who is not of opinion 
 that the common system of teaching syntax by abstract 
 rules conveyed in a difficult style, and in a tongue at first 
 unintelligible to the learner, is a grievous waste of time, and 
 what is worse, a waste of the learner's energy and readiness 
 to be taught." — The New National Grammar, p. 4, by E. E. 
 BowEN, Esq., Fellow of Trin. Coll. Cambridge, Assistant 
 Master at Harrow. 
 
 " I do think that no words can be too strong to condemn 
 the folly of grinding a child's mind at Latin grammar day 
 after day, when there is no chance of his eyes going beyond 
 the mere elements of the language. . . . Might you not as 
 well feed his body upon chaff as feed his mind on mere 
 barren words that carry no thought with them ? " — C. 
 Buxton, Esq. M.P. on Middle Class Education. 
 
 " The day after my entry [at the age of seven years and 
 a half] ... a Latin grammar was placed in my hands. It 
 was a bulky book of its kind. ... It gave all imaginable 
 rules and all imaginable exceptions . . . The Latin was com- 
 municated in a hideously discordant rhythm. Over a space 
 of years we went systematically through and through that 
 book, page after page, chapter after chapter. It was all un- 
 intelligible, all obscure ; but some spots were wrapt in more 
 
APPENDIX. 63 
 
 than ordinary gloom. Not one word, I am sure, of an ex- 
 ceptionable kind had escaped the diabolic ken of the com- 
 piler. String upon string of jangling, unmusical lines could 
 we repeat with a singular rapidity ; understanding nothing ; 
 asking no questions." — Professor D'Arcy Thompson 
 {Day-dreams of a Schoolmaster, ch. i.). 
 
 " La mdthode k suivre est la mdthode matemelle que 
 
 I'Allemagne et la Suisse pratiquent avec tant de succes 
 
 peu ou pas de grammaire si ce n'est pour les paradigmes!^ — 
 M. Vincent Duruy, Ministre de I'lnstruction Publique, 
 1866 {Enseignement secondaire special, p. 41 : " Langues 
 vivantes"). 
 
 "Avec peu de prdceptes et beaucoup d'exercice I'enfant 
 apprendrait en deux ou trois anndes .... plus de grammaire 
 (frangaise) que n'en savent pour I'ordinaire ceux qui ont 
 passd huit ou dix ans au college." — M. L'Abb^ Fleury 
 (Traite du Choix et de la Methode des Etudes). 
 
 APPENDIX D. 
 
 ON THE NEGLECT OF SCIENTIFIC EDUCATION.* 
 
 " Classical scholarship is bought too dear if obtained 
 at the sacrifice of any reasonable prospect of improving the 
 general intellectual character by acquiring habits of con- 
 centrated thought, by familiarizing the mind with the con- 
 It is a pleasing duty to record that in this direction some steps have at last 
 been taken, Rugby has the honour of having introduced science into the regular 
 system ; it has also for some years been encouraged at Harrow, and will become 
 in a few weeks a part of the recognised course. 
 
(J6 APPENDIX. 
 
 templation of abstract truth, and by accustoming it to the 
 attitude of induction."— Sir J. F. W. Herschel {Letter 
 to Public School Commissioners). 
 
 " I am persuaded that, if physical science and 'natural 
 history were introduced more generally into schools, we 
 should hear much fewer complaints of the number of dunces 
 sent into the world after the completion of the ordinary 
 years of study." — Dr. Daubeny {Letter to Mr. Tuckwell). 
 
 " I cannot shut my eyes to the fact that there is a vast 
 difference between men who have had a purely literary and 
 those who have had a sound scientific training." — Pro- 
 fessor Huxley, F.R.S. LL.D. {Modern Culture, p. 115). 
 
 " The great defect of our systems of ' education is the 
 neglect of the educating of the observing powers." — Pro- 
 fessor Forbes {Id, p. 393). 
 
 " I ask you whether this ' land of just and old renown ' 
 has not a right to expect from her institutions a culture which 
 shall embrace something more than declension and conjuga- 
 tion.?"— PROFESSOR Tyndall, F.R.S. LL.D. {Id. p. 29). 
 
 " I have seen in Australia, Oxford men placed in positions 
 in which they had reason bitterly to regret that their costly 
 education, while making them intimately acquainted with 
 remote events and distant nations, had left them in utter 
 ignorance of the laws of nature, and placed them under im- 
 mense disadvantages in that struggle with her which they 
 had to maintain." — Right Hon. Robert Lowe {Oxford 
 Commission Report, vol. ii. p. 13). 
 
APPENDIX. 67 
 
 " Few educated men will be found who, if they have not 
 early studied Physical Science, do not regret such omis- 
 sion."— W. R. Grove, M.A. F.R.S. Q.C. {Id. p. 29). 
 
 "The clergy of the Establishment, 17,000 in number, have 
 the two Universities and nearly all the great schools under 
 their management, and yet in spite of this patronage and 
 power they have been unable so to form and bias the opinions 
 of the public, as to check the progress of the growing dis- 
 satisfaction at the narrowness of the plan of teaching now 
 adopted."— Sm C. Lyell, M.A. F.R.S. {Id. p. 121). 
 
 " Education should represent the existing state of know- 
 ledge. But in America this golden rule is disregarded. . . . 
 What is termed classical learning arrogates to itself a space 
 that excludes much more important things. . . . This evil has 
 arisen from the circumstance that our system was imported 
 from England."— J. Draper, M.D. LL.D. New York 
 {Modem Culture, p. 377). 
 
 " Je crains que, dans nos colleges, le plus grand nombre 
 des jeunes gens ne perdent le temps qu'ils y passent : les uns 
 en apprenant ce qui leur est inutile et menie nuisible; Ics 
 autres, en n'apprenant point ce qui leur est essentiel de 
 savoirj" — Roland d'Erceville {Rapport attx Chambres 
 assembles du Par lenient de Paris, 1768). 
 
 R. CLAY, SON, AND TAYLOR, PIUNTERS, BREAD STREET HILL.